A NAEP report published by the IES in 2007 assessed academic achievement of Puerto Rico’s public schools in Mathematics to be, on average, 50% below the national average by the time students reach the fourth grade. This disparity continues as students reach the eighth grade. It is estimated that Puerto Rico’s educational system lost access to $60 million in Reading First Programs under No Child Left Behind after failing to provide a curriculum that could be approved.

In the most recent study of Internet use on the Island (Puerto Rico Internet Pulse 2008), 38% of the population 12 and older connects to the Internet. Of this group, 15% does not cite the availability of home based connections. The study suggests that this latter group uses access points and computers at school or at work to navigate the web. This information is in stark contrast to the assessment realized by the Library and Information Systems Program of the Puerto Rico Department of Education.

In December 2006, April and May 2007 the Library and Information Systems Program of the Puerto Rico Department of Education conducted a survey among public schools and municipal library users and determined that ·”libraries need (1) to increase the public’s use of technology by increasing electronic capacities of libraries and training librarians and the public to effectively use technology” and secondly, “ (2) public schools need strong school library media programs that will support the academic success of Puerto Rico’s students. However, when the report was published in 2008, its assessment states that nearly 30% of the Puerto Rico public schools do not have adequate technology resources and 85% of public school libraries are said to need urgent renovation of media and technology equipment.

Over 78% of Puerto Rico’s public school students are below the poverty line. For this population, public schools are the first, and often only place, with access to computers. When the reality of Puerto Rico’s public school libraries is considered, it provides a powerful argument for why over 60% of the population 12 and older do not have access to the Internet and can be considered technologically illiterate.

The digital divide, herein described, alongside the recurring under-performance of public school students portrays a population at risk of being systemically disenfranchised from economic opportunity and social advancement. In order to effect change in the short term, a multi-pronged approach that combines innovation in the curriculum, improvement in the technology resources, and ongoing training of the human resources that will manage and interact with the new technology and curriculum changes.

Under the American Recovery and Rehabilitation Act (ARRA) the Federal Government makes funds available to Educational Regions for the modernization of school infrastructure, education reform for underachieving schools, “innovation and improvement” in education, improving data systems and data coordination efforts, ongoing education of teachers in support of school reform and innovation, integration of technology in education and initiatives advancing the learning of math and science. Furthermore, the Federal Government has renewed its commitment to Reading First Programs and has grant programs that focus on the development of libraries and early literacy initiatives.

The Puerto Rico Department of Education has identified problems with the passive integration of educational software in any given class. Computers identified for specific classes and software use are usually made unavailable for other classes to use. Furthermore the breakdown of any computer seems to not only inconvenience the teacher but also the school and negatively taints students and teachers relationship with technology, leaving an impression of disempowerment and lack of control.

The moment is right for making change happen. The proverbial ball is in our court.  Teachers, students, parents, administrators and the community at large all need to come together to bring about change.  Not just change to ease the immediate flow of funds, but the kind of change that transforms us all in the process. Teachers raising the bar on their performance, students growing in focus and commitment, parents with a renewed faith and joy in the school in of their children. Change is never easy but it  is possible we are open to it.

The many in Puerto Rico’s working class will do most anything to avoid putting their children in the public education system. The reputation earned in the community at large and the media is of a bloated, broken bureaucracy that suffers a drop out rate by 7th grade of over 40% and results in systematic failure to prepare its students.  If this sounds unrealistic take the real life cases of Sonia, 37 and Mildred, 44. These are two of the many stories I hear. Some of the stories come from friends, members of my community and from people I casually start talking to in public settings.

Sonia has worked her entire life primarily as a housekeeper, earning under $17,000 a year while raising 3 children. Sonia lives in one of our recently dubbed metro area "special communities" she had a public elementary school just a couple of blocks away. When her eldest son was close to becoming another statistic, she was able to enroll him in a National Guard program designed to help at risk youth. As her second child finished middle school Sonia grew skeptical of the main public school system and enrolled her daughter in a vocational school. For her third child, Sonia was a mom with a plan. With great sacrifice her third child was enrolled in an inner city catholic school. Among the Sonia’s complaints were racism in the schools that victimized her children and resulted in lack of commitment to her children’s progress.

Lets change the setting to a gated working class community.  Mildred’s story is similar, public school is a working parent’s last choice. Eight years ago, Mildred’s husband lost his job at a hotel, leaving the family with only her wages as a secretary. In this period of uncertainty and financial duress 3 of her children were still in school.The parents fretted over the decision but keeping up with the mortgage and rising utility bills, they opted to pull out of the private catholic school her two boys who seemed to be underperforming,  leaving only the youngest in the catholic school elementary.  The eldest of these was enrolled in a vocational school and the younger brother in a public elementary school just a mile away.  As soon as it was practical, the younger brother was enrolled in the same vocational school.

Both stories illustrate that to many parents relying on Puerto Rico’s public school system is a  choice they are forced to consider and try to avoid making if it is at all possible.  Oakland, New York City, St. Louis, have all had failing school district, there like here, right now, against this backdrop, the timing seems right for the institution of charter schools. This new educational offer would be available only in places where the community came together in a grassroots movement that activated parents, teacher and administrators and rallied them around a common set of principles and rules. These new community charter schools would best be suited for failing schools as a dramatic measure of restoring the hope of a better educational offer. The introduction of these schools would be only one part of a plan regain the public trust in public education. 

Charter schools are not a magical pill. Public education needs to be reformed and strengthened, but like many teachers and administrators today know, public schools cannot work in a vacuum. They need the support of parents and the community, but the climate for cooperation has been poisoned, not by Charter schools, as the teachers unions suggest but by an unresponsive bureaucratic system, exhaustion, fear and despair.

I was having another quiet morning digesting educational research in preparation to resume writing my dissertation. This morning I was reading Loli Arnaut’s description of her Amara Berri project.  I was trying to understand how news of the "success" of the Amara Berri project was spreading and individual teachers were inte­rpreting, adopting and adapting what they thought the Amara Berri project was. Practically all, six out of seven first grade classrooms visited were incorporat­ing elements from the Amara Berri project trying to introduce its "winning formula."  I was lost amidst my field experience and struggling to find the words and connections to my dissertation a voice in the back of my head asked: How are you going to apply this? What is the Amara Berri project to you? How am I going to sum it up? What am I going to do with this knowledge? How am I going to put this into action? How is this going to apply to anything else outside of the Basque Country?"

The questions had progressed from a distant third person perspective asking others, sifting through memories of research, to a third person asking myself. I then embarked on a brief tangent as I asked explored answers to these questions. This is when I crafted a vision for Cross-disciplinary Education for Global Economy program. The idea pulls from experiences beyond the Basque Country and sought to apply lessons learned to problems at hand. The problem I was contemplating was how to introduce reform and revitalize the public education system without creating havoc.

I was just writing down how many Basque parents in Oarsoaldea had an intuitive Gramscian perspective on schools when  I got a call from  a dear friend. The call was welcome because though on a self imposed silent retreat to write, her voice takes me back to my college years. I shared with her what I was just writing about when she in reply unveiled the bizarre coincidence.

"You do know you are just fee away from the President of the Basque Country, right. He is there at the hotel."  she chimed.  Basque is in the air. The Juan JoséIbarretxe is here to address the Puerto Rican lawyers in their annual retreat and explore the "free associated state" model defined by Puerto Rico. 

 Here I am, sitting no more than 200 yards away in an apartment within the same resort writing, pondering the quirks of how Basque national identity tracends and evolves from generation to generation.  I chose to study the Basque Country because I found it to be oddly similar to Puerto Rico as a geographic region with its own national identity and a language that is different than the larger state that encompasses the territory. Language and identity are hotly debated in the US discourse on bilingual education. Will bilingual education introduce fissures into the US melting pot? Will bilingual citizens have conflicting national loyalties? A lot has been said on this topic and I am drawn to join the debate.

Just this past week, as part of my day to day business development,  I visited Puerto Rico’s first cooperative of farmers – recent clients of ours – and learned about their plans to grow their production and export coffee. A few weeks back the Executive President of the Cooperative and I were clear that the exports would most likely be aimed to the US market. To my surprise last week I learned he was considering the Spanish market, beginning with the Basque region. This change in plans came from ongoing exchanges with the leaders of the Mondragon Cooperative movement.  Jim took plenty of great pictures of the countryside and the facilities for the Cooperative to use in their meetings this week with the visitors from Mondragon. The talk of the Basque Country during our visit to the coffee plantations got me thinking of going back there someday. It was enough motivation to get me to write.

I now can imagine it is all part of the same trip. The President of the Basque Country travelled in the company of leaders of Mondragon.  They are most likely all here in Rio Mar having their meetings. The President is set to address Puerto Rico’s lawyers at their annual convention and those interested in cooperatives are likely to meet here too.

Basque is in the air. If ever there would be muses or metaphysical spirit at work the remarkable coincidences would prescribe it for today of all days.

"Once concepts reach a sweet point of communicability through schooling they are borne to a new life where they evolve in the popular imagination to unpredictable destinations."…. ok not all sentences are making it to the final chapter but I now resume the task at hand. 

Jim works with the prison ministry and this past tuesday they resumed the group of mentors resumed their visits to the local juvenile detention center. I know he was upset to be unable to attend. Tired and stressed as he might be on any given day, when he does go connect with any one of these youths both parties reap the benefit. Jim comes home with a story with the satisfaction of having given of his time to say "I am here, and I care" to another human being in need. The youth I surmise is impacted by the simple truth that somebody, a stranger was there to see him.  Well Jim could not make it because it was our anniversary and instead we would be taking a work related trip to coffee country to learn about the operations of Puerto Rico’s oldest agricultural cooperative and their recent commercial launch of a coffee brand: Café Cibales.  Jim and I love coffee and have had the occassional dream of someday retiring to the countryside and growing coffee.

This past week week I was able to put the final touches on the launch of a strategic collaboration with Miray and Isabel.   Miray Ramy is an amazing educator and entrepreneur. The passion with which she designs and develops educational programs for her after-school programs and summer camps is intoxicating. Her can do spirit is definitely the entrepreneur in her fueling her interest education. Around her its easy to think: sure lets do robotics, lets make chess hip, lets teach kids writing through film projects. Isabel is a clinical psychologist that works primarily with elementary school children. This week she and I were discussing bilingual education and whether an early or late exposure to a third language would be best  for our children. Her plans were French for preschoolers, chinese for high school.

To finish the preamble here, last night as I drove to the beach apartment to have my weekly writing retreat, I listened on the radio two people, a man and a woman, who had served their time in a federal prison facility and were at present gainfully employed and productive members of society with a loving family of their own. Their stories were very similar. They were convicted for trafficking drugs. In prison they were able to finish their education, get a higher degree, develop a love for self improvement, develop a work ethic and leave the prison system with books undertow to face life anew. Saddly this is not the case for most of the people serving prison sentences in Puerto Rico prisons – where resources are limited and education and productive skill development of the prisoners is a big area for improvement. Therefore, it is no surprise there is a great degree of re-incidence as prison is visited once and again by individuals stuck in a routine they lack the tools to change.

Last night in my dreams these influences must have all coalesced in my dreams because I woke up with the a beautiful vision for a future project: Proyecto Siembra.

I envision Proyecto Siembra to be a cooperative of coffee pickers or farm hands. An opportunity open to juvenile offenders and selective older convicts in the adult prison system. The project would begin with education in the prison system to finish high school diplomas and offer courses in agronomy and the business of farming.  I would encourage visits from farmers to come talk to the kids and have them see productive male role models that are not slaves to bling or twisted around by disses.  I would hope these youths would see what I saw: soft spoken men full of grace, poise, strength and knowledge for their place tending and depending on the eco-system.  If our youths are plagued by a loss of purpose and sense to their surrounding and they are severely lacking in male role models Proyecto Siembra would begin to address these needs and sow the seed of hope.  As the youths make it to the country side to put in 8 hours of productive work I would bet that  would also see in themselves the growth of their self esteem and dreams for a better and more meaninful life.

 Just this past year the Department of Agriculture on the island was asking the immigrant population to lend a hand and assist with the collection of coffee beans. It is hard manual labor in a mountainous terrain. Extra hands seem to always be in need.

Now that I think about  it, Lilimar told me of a similar project was designed in Venezuela by a Rum company.  I remember hearing a top executive of

Ron Santa Teresa come and talk about how they gave local youths who had vandalized the premises of their company the opportunity to earn their freedom by working the fields rather than being processed through the criminal system.  Years later youths from the surrounding neighborhood gangs voluntarily requested to join the work program and the crime wave that threatened productivity and peace was dissipated.

Looking to transplant some of these examples of corporate social responsibility to the Island, Lilimar facilitated the development of Fundación Arte en Concreto. This Fundación is the pro-active response of Cemex to the social and economic development of the Island. This foundation supervises the delivery of cement handling skills to prisoners giving them the opportunity to become masterful builders.

So in the end as I write down my semi-conscious dream, I realize it did not come out of the thin blue ether but evolved from the interconnection of many recent and not so recent threads. Threads of action, talent and thought of socially committed citizens that inspire me to see solutions to the ills of today.